Wednesday, May 20, 2015

A CNN panel earlier this afternoon really went off over the media referring to the Baltimore rioters as “thugs,” but avoiding that label in talking about the Waco biker gangs. Charles Blow and Sally Kohn agreed there’s a big double standard, while ex-NYPD detective Harry Houck said the comparison’s tremendously unfair.

Blow said it’s not just about white people, since President Obama and the mayor of Baltimore used the t-word to describe the rioters, but about “a culture that looks at blackness and says it sounds like a certain thing.”

Kohn added that no one ever notes the race of white shooters or talks about a “whiteness” problem when it comes to certain acts of violence.

Houck rejected the comparison and said that of course the bikers are thugs. As for the term itself, he said that he mean[s] ‘bad guy’ when I use the word,” and the reason it’s ascribed more to blacks is because it was embraced by the rap community. Blow told him he was way off on that one.

The second segment involved a lot more crosstalk and shouting, as Houck scolded Kohn and Blow for their “talking points” and them insisting there’s a serious problem with the pathologizing of the black community. Houck just told them to “quit looking at the past” and coming up with “excuses